The
New York Times’ Venezuela problem continued to snowball yesterday as its
Caracas correspondent Francisco Toro resigned.

Toro acknowledged, in a letter to Times editor
Patrick J. Lyons, “conflicts of interest concerns” regarding his
participation in protest marches and his “lifestyle bound up with opposition
activism.”

Toro’s obsessive anti-Chavez position in
Venezuela was publicly known after last April’s coup when he began sending
emails to
Narco News and other journalists
who he placed on his own mailing list attacking Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez. That the Times hired him in the first place was a violation of the
Times’ own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. But regarding
Venezuela, it was not the first.

Toro’s resignation – the text of his letter
sent to the Times management last night appears below - is the latest in a
long series of missteps and misdeeds by the New York Times and its reporters
regarding the New York newspaper’s one-sided and inaccurate Venezuela
coverage:

* Last April, the Times
editorial board had to issue
a public apology – sent to
journalist Jules Siegel (a professor at the Narco News School of Authentic
Journalism) by editorial board member Gail Collins. She said, “Nobody should
ever cheer the overthrow of a democratically elected government. You're
right, we dropped the ball on our first Venezuela editorial.”

* Also last April, New
York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had
“resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did
not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on April 13, wrote a puff
piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona – installed by a military coup –
as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and sent
his shocktroops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which
sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the
Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the
national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.

* Forero – who,
Narco News reported in 2001,
allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots
in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article – was caught again
last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News
Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealedthat Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written
essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a
wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant
to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The
LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller
interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.

* In many ways, it has
been the credibility problem posed by Forero that led to Toro’s hiring last
November by the Times, and the importation of Times Mexico Bureau Chief
Ginger Thompson to Venezuela last month.

* But Thompson’s reporting has also been laden
with distortions. Last week she reported that there had been a “strike” by
“bank workers” when, in fact, it was a lockout by bank owners supported only
by the executives “union” – which represents only one percent of bank
workers in the country. (That the bank lockout of its customers – conducted
by 60 percent of bank branches over two days – constituted a theft of
people’s access to their own money was not raised by Thompson’s article.)

* Thompson, again yesterday, continued to
embarrass herself and the Times with a report that “strike” leaders in
Venezuela – now completely defeated on every front – are “discussing new
strategies to ease the hardship on Venezuelans, including partly lifting the
strike to allow businesses and factories to reopen.” This turn of phrase is
dishonest on Thompson’s part, transparently an attempt to spin the collapse
of the upper-class lock-out as an intentional “evolution” in strategy.

* On December 13, Times columnist Nick Kristof
quoted Toro as “a Venezuela journalist” without disclosing that he was, at
that time, a New York Times reporter; hardly on the scale of the other
violations of the Times’ own stated ethical practices by Forero, but still
an interesting revelation of how confused the Times’ coverage of Venezuela
has been in recent years. When was the last time a Times columnist quoted a
Times reporter without identifying him as such?

As “strike” leaders
Carlos Fernandez (the Spain-born president of Venezuela’s chamber of big
business) and Carlos Ortega (a union boss whose election as head of the
Venezuela Workers Federation was marred by evidence of fraud and undisclosed
financial support from United States taxpayer funds) head to New York for a
dog-and-pony show hosted by
David Rockefeller’s Council of the Americas
on Wednesday morning, the “Strike That Wasn’t” has already lost even the
illusion of a “strike” made possible by the reporting of Timespersons Forero,
Thompson, Toro and others.

But sometimes even the New York Times must
stand naked, and the tale of the rise and fall of Francisco Toro as
“Timesman-for-a-month” reveals a documented intention by Times editors to
hire, in Toro, a pro-coup spin-meister.

Francisco Toro: Timesman-for-a-Month

Toro first appeared on the pages of the Times
last September 24, when he was quoted by Forero and identified as “an editor
at Veneconomia, a financial newsletter,” bolstering Forero’s spin that
Chávez had wrecked Venezuela’s economy. Two months later, Toro popped up as
a Times reporter.

A LexisNexis search reveals that, in his brief
career at the Times, Toro penned just two articles: on November 21
(“Venezuela Ready to License Rights to Offshore Gas “) and November 30
(“White Collar Oil Workers Key in Venezuela Crisis”). Ironically, Toro’s
reports were more balanced than those of the rabidly pro-coup Forero or
those of relief pitcher Thompson: Toro, at least, acknowledged that it was
the “white collar” members of the state oil company’s management behind the
lock-out and that “The biggest federation of blue-collar unions in the oil
industry, Fedepetrol, is split between pro- and anti-government factions.”

In fact, even last fall, before the “strike”
began on December 2nd, Toro acknowledged on his own
Internet weblog that “this strike
doesn’t have a chance… the strike will fail.” If only some of that kind of
interpretation had made its way onto the Times’ pages over the past month!

Toro, with one key exception, has honored the
Golden Rule of the New York Times – “Don’t Get Caught” – better than Forero
or Thompson. Toro, who publicly acknowledges that he admires Mexico’s
disgraced ex-Secretary of State Jorge Castañeda
(who also resigned this past week from his post), plays the “objectivity
game” slightly better than the official Timesmen: Mixing his rabid pro-coup
sentiments with flourishes of measure and consideration of other views so as
to appear more balanced.

Here is a copy of Toro’s resignation letter,
sent yesterday afternoon to Times editor Patrick Lyons, and now posted to
Toro’s weblog:

From "Francisco Toro"

Date Mon, 13 Jan 2003
5:57 PM

To "Patrick J. Lyons"

Subject

--------------------------------------------------

Dear Pat,

After much careful
consideration, I’ve decided I can’t continue reporting for the New York
Times. As I examine the problem, I realize it would take much more than just
pulling down my blog to address your conflict of interests concerns. Too
much of my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment,
from participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending
protest marches. But even if I gave all of that up, I don’t think I could
muster the level of emotional detachment from the story that the New York
Times demands. For better or for worse, my country’s democracy is in peril
now, and I can’t possibly be neutral about that.

I appreciate your
understanding throughout this difficult time, and I hope in the future,
conditions will allow for me to contribute with the World Business page
again.

Sincerely,

Francisco Toro

Toro, on January 7th, committed an act of
disclosure that probably marked the beginning of the end of his Times
career: He spoke “out of class” about his interactions with a NY Times
editor, also on his weblog:

“It’s tough being a
journalist in this country, especially if, like me, you’re trying to juggle
roles as a critic in the local press and a beat reporter for a U.S.
newspaper. Trying to play both roles – and trying to mediate between the
sides – takes its toll. It’s the reason, in any event, for the new and
regrettable need to password-protect this blog: one of my US editors was
very uncomfortable with having one of his reporters taking such openly
political stances on a public website.”

In other words, at least by January 7th, the
Grand Poohbahs of 43rd Street were already aware of Toro’s conflicts of
interest, and whatever they said to him led him to sweep his blog under the
rug with password-only access. This suggests strongly that at the Times,
conflicts of interest are tolerated as long as they are not disclosed or
made public.

Then, last night, Toro came clean: “my
lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment, from
participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest
marches.”

As much as I disagree with Toro’s politics (I
have argued with him before in heated exchanges), I admire him for
disclosing what the New York Times did not want him to disclose: his clear
bias and his conflicts of interest. By resigning from the Times in an open
and public manner, he did the right thing.

But the New York Times comes out of this
episode with its already broken credibility regarding Venezuela reporting
more damaged than ever. The Times’ Venezuela coverage is adrift, caught
between its self-proclaimed “objective” mission and its hidden agenda: the
distortion of news from that country in order to destabilize a
democratically elected government.

If the Times International Desk had a shred of
journalistic ethics, it would have either hired Toro as a partisan columnist
or disclosed his activity in organizations, protest marches and the rest of
what Toro himself calls his “opposition activism” on its pages when it hired
him as a news correspondent.

That
the Times hired Toro in the first place, did not disclose his conflicts, and
then apparently encouraged Toro to hide his conflicts by blocking public
access to his web blog for the past week, indicates that the cancer inside
the 43rd Street offices of the New York Times that grows from its simulated
Venezuela coverage is malignant. Until the Times’ management comes clean on
this and previous ethical lapses, particularly those of Forero, regarding
Venezuela, the patient – the newspaper’s credibility – continues to die.